How To Add Your Own 3D Touch Quick Actions To Any iOS App

It’s been a month since the release of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, and it doesn’t seem like 3D Touch is dropping off the radar any time soon. Although developers contributing to the App Store have been slow to adopt Apple’s new pressure-sensitive input technology and its accompanying software features, those over at the Cydia store are continuing to produce system tweaks that improve upon said features or port them to older devices.

The latest addition to Cydia’s growing list of 3D Touch tweaks is Traverse by Brian Olencki, which lets users create custom 3D Touch Quick Actions for apps. The tweak has a configuration menu that might prove to be a little complicated for the regular user, so in what follows, we’ll try to take a crack at simplifying it for you. There is a demo video on the tweak’s page that shows how you can create entries for an app’s Quick Actions menu, but it doesn’t explain how to get an app’s Bundle ID or the URL schemes needed to link sections or functions within apps to the custom menu entries.

Update: The tweak now has its own database of Quick Actions! You can search through the TraverseDB for app-specific actions right from within Settings > Traverse > Database, add an action of choice by swiping leftward across it and tapping Add Action.

As the tweak now also allows editing of actions, the ones you add from the database can be customized to match your requirement. You can still create custom Quick Actions from scratch, of course. Just don’t forget to give back to the community by submitting any new actions you create to traversedb.com.

To get an app’s Bundle ID, this what you need to do:

1. Launch Cydia and download the BundleIDs app.

2. Launch the newly installed BundleIDs app from the Home screen. The app should display a list of all your installed apps.

3. Select an app to copy its Bundle ID to the clipboard.

The app shows you the ID as well, but as it is automatically copied to the clipboard, so you don’t need to note it down. Simply head on over to Settings > Traverse, hit Editfollowed by the ‘+’ icon and paste the copied ID into the URL Scheme field.

Now, to fetch a URL scheme for a function within the app. Before you set off to look for a particular URL scheme, know that it’s likely you’ll have to do quite a bit of digging before you find it, if at all. Good news is that might change in a while thanks to a dedicated subreddit having been started for the tweak.

In the following example, we used a URL scheme for Google Chrome to open a custom URL (our homepage) in a new tab within the browser right from the Home screen. The same URL scheme can be used to open a new tab to any other webpage with a simple edit.

Once you’ve entered the Bundle ID and URL scheme, all you have to do is enter a name for the custom action along with a brief description, then select the icon you want displayed beside it and hit return on the keyboard. Now, tap the Back button in the top-left corner and pull down to refresh the actions list.

You should see your new entry at the top, and if you return to the Home screen to invoke the app’s Quick Actions menu, you’ll see the action added there as well. No respring needed. The tweak also offers an extra feature on the side

You can download Traverse for free from the developer’s repository at cydia.bolencki13.com/repo.

Watch the developer’s demo video below.

If you liked this post, don’t forget to check out our Cydia tweaks section.

I'm an engineer, blogger, and graphic designer who loves creating and experimenting with different forms of online content when he's not looking for a mix of inspiration and escape in PC gaming, comic books and anime. You can find me on Twitter and Google+.